Redmond's Question

First half: Within a few paragraphs of this novel's beginning, James Mortimer says to Sherlock Holmes, "I confess that I covet your skull." Is it right for a shiver to run down the reader's spine? And in how many ways does that unexpected sentence foreshadow what is to come as the events of the story unfold?Second half: This novel is often interpreted as a discussion of what happens when science and superstition meet. Is it also—considering the lingering love with which Doyle has Watson describe the rank vegetation of the mire and the bleak beauty of the moor—about the collision between urban civilization and rural nature?